The market for digital products just gets more and more competitive, doesn't it?
It can feel disheartening sometimes. You believe in your product—but there's always someone around the corner doing it the same way.
For solo founders, early-stage marketers, or overextended product teams, this is where positioning becomes either your secret weapon or your downfall. In a saturated space, your product doesn’t fail because it’s bad. It fails because no one understands why it’s different.
In this article, we’ll explore how to craft compelling positioning in crowded markets—even when it feels like you’re not doing anything different to your closest neighbour.
The beauty of this? With good positioning, you can be way behind the pack and still win business. Let's look at how.
‘Better’ is not a positioning strategy
April Dunford, in her book Obviously Awesome, makes an essential point: if your product is better but no one understands it, you lose. And she’s right. I used to think I’d just win on merit—that if our product is faster, easier, or more efficient, the market would reward us.
But in practice, everyone makes those same claims. Everyone says they’re simpler. Or more powerful. Or “built for teams who value speed”. It creates a sea of sameness, where buyers tune out and products blur together.
To stand out, you need more than a list of features. You need a sharp narrative about why you exist in the first place, that starts by acknowledging that “better” isn’t enough. The real question is: better than what? And better in what way?
Which leads us to a smarter strategy: different.
Zoom out and assess the competitive landscape
Before you can position yourself as different, you have to understand what you’re different from. This is where most early GTM work falters—founders name a few direct competitors and move on. But true differentiation requires a more thoughtful segmentation of the landscape.
Instead of listing company names, group the alternatives by how people solve the problem today. Here’s a better breakdown:
- Direct competitors: Companies with a similar product category, often with overlapping features or messaging.
- Internal DIY tools: Homegrown solutions built in spreadsheets, Notion, Airtable, Zapier, or some messy combination.
- Adjacent tools: Products built for a related use case that customers have co-opted to fill the gap.
- The status quo: Doing nothing at all and living with the pain, either because the problem isn’t seen as urgent or the available solutions are worse than the problem.
Why does this matter? Because your positioning should change depending on which of these groups you’re targeting. If your main competition is inertia—the status quo—you need to create urgency. If you’re replacing a heavyweight incumbent, you need to highlight relevance and agility. If you’re displacing DIY systems, focus on time savings and error reduction.
Look at Linear, for example. It didn’t position itself as just another project management tool. It explicitly distanced itself from Jira by appealing to engineers who hated bloated, slow PM software. Its narrative was built not on features, but on frustration with existing tools. That’s smart segmentation driving sharp positioning.
Revisit the problem you think you’re solving
So many startups can’t seem to articulate the problem they solve in a way that feels specific, visceral, and urgent. Instead, they lean on generalities. “We help teams collaborate more effectively.” “We streamline operations.”
That kind of language sounds clean, but it’s toothless. It applies to hundreds of products. No one will remember it, let alone act on it.
Good positioning starts with a sharp definition of the problem—one that’s grounded in real-world pain. That means interrogating your assumptions. Asking who actually feels the pain. What they do today to solve it. Why it’s not working. And what happens if they don’t solve it at all.
A useful framework here is: Pain > Shift > Solution. First, identify the pain. Then, show what’s changed in the world to make this problem newly urgent. Only then do you present your product as the natural solution.
Fathom, the Zoom call assistant, is a great example. It doesn’t pitch itself as a generic “meeting assistant.” Instead, it leads with: "Stop taking notes during Zoom calls." That’s a specific behavior people recognize. The pain is clear (note-taking sucks), and the value is immediate (Fathom does it for you, and syncs with your CRM). The clarity of the problem statement makes the value obvious.
It’s amazing how something as fundamental as your problem statement can sometimes be wrong. At my last company, we were pretty fixated on manual, paper-based processes being our customer’s status quo. As we went upmarket, it turned out most of them had another system in place but it wasn’t being adopted—which meant we had to radically shift our positioning. When we did, we were much more successful converting mid-market and enterprise leads.
Use 'different vs. better' to sharpen your edge
Once you’ve nailed the problem, you need to craft a narrative that sets you apart. Here’s where the \"different vs. better\" framework becomes incredibly useful.
Most early-stage founders and PMMs default to better. \"We’re faster.\" \"We’re cheaper.\" \"We’re more customizable.\" But again—so is everyone.
Positioning through difference, on the other hand, forces you to identify your angle. That angle might be:
- Built for a specific user: Maybe your product is built just for SDRs, not the entire sales org. That focus alone is differentiating.
- Built for a new environment: If everyone else is designed for in-office teams, and you’re built for async remote work, that’s a differentiator.
- Radically opinionated: You strip out every option and build around one specific use case. Some customers won’t like it—but the right ones will love it.
Pitch is a good example of this kind of differentiation. It didn’t just say it was “a better way to make slides.” It said: \"Pitch is built for modern, fast-moving, distributed teams.\" That angle resonates deeply with people who feel PowerPoint and Google Slides weren’t built for today’s workflow. It’s not about being better in general—it’s about being the right tool for the moment we’re in.
Anchor your positioning in the right moment
The best positioning doesn’t just differentiate the product. It also answers a simple but critical question: why now?
This is often overlooked, but in a crowded market, it’s your wedge. If your audience doesn’t believe that the world has changed in a way that makes your product necessary now, they’ll file you under “nice-to-have.”
There are a few angles you can use to establish timing:
- Technological shifts: \"Since AI hit the mainstream, every team is drowning in tools. We consolidate the mess.\"
- Behavioral shifts: \"People now expect async by default. Our product is designed for that.\"
- Economic shifts: \"Budgets are tighter than ever. We help you do more with less.\"
This kind of narrative reframes your product not as something new, but as something inevitable. You’re not asking them to change their behavior—you’re showing that the world already has, and your product is the logical response.
The positioning stack you need
I’ve been leaning on a simplified positioning stack that brings all of this together for new products.
- Target Customer: Who are you for? Not just company size or job title, but mindset, behavior, frustration.
- Pain Point: What’s their specific problem? What are they doing today that’s not working?
- Existing Alternatives: How do they currently solve this problem? What’s broken about that approach?
- Your Unique Angle: What makes your approach fundamentally different, not just incrementally better?
- Why Now: What shift makes your product newly relevant?
If you can articulate each of these points clearly—and in language that feels real, not jargon-filled—you’re on your way to effective positioning.
You don’t need to invent a new category to win. You don’t need to coin a new buzzword. What you need is clarity: about the problem, the customer, the moment, and your edge.
The crowded market isn’t the enemy. It’s proof that the problem matters. If you can articulate your difference with confidence and precision, you’ll stand out. Not because you shouted the loudest—but because you made the most sense.
And in a world full of noise, that’s what wins.